Arts & Entertainment
Peter Schmitz
by Jennifer Ponder
Choreographer Peter Schmitz doesn’t talk with just his hands, but rather his whole body, constantly in motion. Two hip replacements don’t slow him down in the least. I’m not sure how old he is; I’ve heard him claim anywhere from 12 to 73. He most frequently claims to be in his thirties.
“Obfuscation” is one of Peter’s favorite terms. For a while, I thought he had made it up, in the same way that I thought he had made up “penumbra” which he informed me, with some disbelief at my ignorance, was the shadowy not-quite-darkness just outside a circle of light falling on the stage.
As it turns out, to obfuscate means to confuse, to make unclear, or to darken. One of Peter’s primary choreographic concerns is not to show us a story, not to demonstrate athletic and graceful movement, but to obfuscate that story and movement from the audience. He would much rather watch something unfold on stage through another, possibly quite different, event.
During Peter’s master class on the stage of the Flynn Theatre in Burlington recently, he was having the students show their obfuscating solos, that is, the solos created in and around and in front of another student’s work. There were about 20 students, men and women, of all ages and skill levels. The class was held on the stage of the theatre, under the mysteriously beautiful pools of down-directed worklight. The stark architecture of the stage was revealed, the brick back wall, the hemp ropes of the pinrail, the gloomy periphery of the house seats. It seemed like the audience seating disappeared, but the dramatic atmosphere made it one of the most visually interesting dance classes I had ever watched.
The class began with a warm-up. Peter had the students cross the floor, motivating their movement from different body parts, beginning with the skull. As the students’ bodies followed wherever their skull led them, Peter reminded them that the average skull weighs ten to fifteen pounds, and is not nailed to the neck and shoulders in a fixed position. As he encouraged them to feel the weight of their skulls rolling in different directions, pulling the rest of the bodies behind them, the quality of movement changed. People who, just a short time before, turned their heads, necks, and shoulders together like one large, fused body part, were now snaking their spines around the room. It was an amazing transformation.
Next were the ribs, then the pelvis, each leg, then each arm. Each time the motivating body part changed, Peter would squirm, leap, run, and convulse across the stage, demonstrating and articulating the infinite variety of movement choices. As the class progressed, adding more body parts to the repertoire, the tempo increased. People began to run as they reached the cumulative point of moving from every part of their body.
It was when Peter asked the class to continue this movement while considering the space, to notice the floor pattern of the charging amoeba of people, to become aware of what parts of the stage were occupied or not, that I realized that this was not just a warm-up. It was a warm-up, a group bonding event, and an exercise in movement invention and spatial composition.
Later Peter explained that each student had composed two solos, the first one contained within a small box of space, and the second one, the obfuscating solo, moving in and around another student’s work. The twist was that as the pairs of students showed their work, they first showed the duet created by combining a box solo with an obfuscating solo, and then they showed their obfuscating solos independently. It was revealing to me, and to the students, that these solos, created in a contextually dependent relationship, then gained a life and vitality of their own. The obfuscating solo, initially existing only in relationship to another body, became its own event.
The goal of this exercise, Peter explained, was to engage the students’ movement awareness both internally and externally. Rather than creating a piece of movement and then placing it within a spatial composition, he asked them to simultaneously engage the architecture of the body as well as the architecture around it.
Peter’s relationship to space permeates his work. In his notes about a recent work, Felt Presence of and Absence, he says, “For many years, I have reflected about the visceral, sensual quality of this thing we call ‘space.’ As a choreographer, I think about ‘spaces’ in the body as areas of movement initiation; the body itself as it moves through and occupies space; how certain structures, when placed, help to define and the movement through and in it. The act of transition, small or large, has spatial integrity.”
Felt Presence of an Absence was commissioned by Middlebury College, where Peter is on the dance faculty, in celebration of the college’s Bicentennial. The evening-length work, choreographed in collaboration with a company of undergraduate and professional alumni dancers, was performed at the Cunningham Studio in New York this spring.
Peter is not just a choreographer, however. During his 20-year involvement in the performing arts, he’s gone many places and done many things to keep food on the table. He is a longtime member of Terry Creach’s all male company of dancers, Creach/Company. He is a member of a performance improvisation ensemble, and is on the faculty of an annual summer intensive workshop, Work in the Performance of Improvisation, held on the Bennington College campus. He is also an actor who frequently appears in Middlebury College theatre productions, and performs with the Potomac Theatre Project in Washington, D.C. His other theatre credits include A.R.T. and Triangle Theatre in Boston.
He has received a Meet the Composer grant in Massachusetts and in Vermont, a Dance Umbrella commission, guest artist residency at Rhode Island College, and a Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities Award. Peter has worked at various colleges and in numerous communities throughout the US, Europe, and New Zealand. As guest artist, Peter has taught and performed in Amsterdam, Germany, France, and Italy.
When he’s in town, he lives in an efficiency apartment overlooking the Middlebury Falls. It is furnished primarily by light, books, plants, and pictures and momentos from friends, providing a simple serenity. He is a man of wry humor and quick wit, always observing the ridiculous in himself and any situation. He is passionate, mercurial, enigmatic, unpredictable, and generous of heart and spirit.
Jennifer Ponder is the lighting designer and technical director for the Middlebury College Dance Program.